I am interested in hand knit traditional ganseys. They were beautiful and extraordinarily functional garments. Here is my research journal and thoughts on related historical issues

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Under Spun ?

Naw!!

It is soft, fluffy, carded Rambouillet woolen spun at 5,600 ypp @ 12 tpi. It is soft and lofty.

The current batts were scoured with a potassium-lanolin soap, and have a particularly soft texture, but something of a sheepy smell.

It will be woven as weft, fulled, teased to a nap, and clipped to make nice wool flannel. (I hope!) If it has more twist, it will not tease up properly. It takes a while to work out just how all this is best done.

As a sport weight, the woolen spun 5-ply is is very knitable (after fulling), but that is a by-product, a diversion, and not the goal. In dry cold, it is perhaps the warmest, softest, most elastic yarn that I have ever produced. And, it can be brushed to a soft nap. In the rain, well! Weatherproofing a pile of swatches produced the discussions on baby oil. In the beginning is Spinning.

If you are interested in knitting such yarns, spin some up yourself. In the past, I have given the required details. It is easy. I even showed you the best lazy Kate for making 5-ply. Did you think I would cover the topic again? No! We did knitting! We did plying. Why should I waste time putting such stuff in the Blog again and again? I took 3 swings at lanolin because some are bigoted against baby oil.

Knitting, and even weaving are sideshows. The base of great textiles is great spinning. On the path to great spinning, details matter. A small comparative advantage in spinning is better than a large comparative advantage in weaving, or even a huge comparative advantage in knitting. With the TV off, production of 5,600 ypp woolen singles is something over 9 yards per minute. With a better wind-off procedure, total production is over 500 yards per hour.

These days, knitting is something that goes on in the background. I do not expect to have anything interesting to say about it in the foreseeable future.

To a certain extent, spinning is very much like a video game. Spinning finer, or spinning faster, or spinning more consistantly is just as addictive as seeking higher scores in a video game.

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